


Threads

by plutosrose



Series: Stucky Bingo 2020 [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Hydra's Nazi Experiments, Investigations, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve being violent toward nazis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: There are some threads Steve will pull loose if it means finding Bucky.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson
Series: Stucky Bingo 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830826
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36
Collections: Stucky Bingo 2020





	Threads

**Author's Note:**

> This was for the Stucky Bingo 2020 prompt "Weakness."

Nat hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him that he might not have wanted to pull on the thread.

The file on Bucky was thin, but there was more than enough there to make his stomach turn. More than once, he took out the photos in the file when he was alone and looked at them. Really looked at them. Until he felt an overwhelming, choking sense of guilt, as though he was the one who had put Bucky in that metal chair.

He and Sam worked quickly, and since they had no real leads to start, they began by retracing Bucky’s steps after he fell through the ice. A facility in the Alps--then Moscow--then Siberia--until resurfacing in the United States again in 1963.

He spent a lot more time staring at that grainy photo of Bucky on a Dallas rooftop than he was willing to admit to Sam.

-

“It’s my fault,” he’d said more than once as Sam poured over a map of a Hydra facility that they’d seen referenced in Bucky’s file. Sam just hummed to himself as he noted something down in the margins.

“All of those people who died, who Bucky killed, I might as well have killed them myself. It would have never happened if I had gone looking for him when he’d fallen,” Steve’s breath caught as he was flooded with the memory of downing wine bottle after wine bottle, getting increasingly upset and angry that it wasn’t much different than drinking water.

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Sam said for the third time that week, glancing up at him. “You didn’t know he survived. You had a mission and no way to go back and look for him.”

Steve shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “That never stopped me before.” The only reason that Steve doesn’t snap at him and ask if he’d look for him if it had been him and Riley on that train is because he knows exactly what happened to Riley, and exactly why he didn’t need to look for him.

Sam reached out and put his hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to find him.”

The more Steve looked at the file and the maps and the fucking photos, he wasn’t sure if it was going to be okay. Nothing about this was okay. It would have been kinder if the world had allowed Bucky to die when he’d fallen from the train, and he absolutely hated himself for thinking it.

-  
The trail is cold, and that might be generous for him to say.

For the first few months, he and Sam had worked backward, mapping out Bucky’s past in an effort to understand who he was now and where he might go. They’d followed sightings of a man that matched Bucky’s description across the southwest and into Alaska, until the trail had suddenly gone sideways and Nat (from an undisclosed location and insisting that this was going to be the one time she helped him with this) had sent them pictures of someone who looked an awful lot like Bucky.

“That can’t be him,” Steve said to Sam as he studied the photos. “How the hell would Bucky even get a passport?

“Yeah...we’ll put it in the ‘maybe’ pile,” Sam glanced over to the stack of papers he hadn’t been able to get Steve to get rid of.

-

And honestly, Steve had been doing really well with sticking to the investigation. He and Sam worked well together, and he didn’t feel comfortable chasing any leads without him.

That was, until, Nat (once again promising that this would be the _last_ time that she helped with this ‘really stupid idea Steve, he’ll probably just kill you if you find him’) slipped a file underneath the door of his apartment.

He felt so stupid when he read it.

There was a Hydra facility supposedly on one of the tiny islands that dotted the Potomac. He was pretty certain that he’d even gone past it the one time that Sam had managed to convince him to go kayaking.

The Winter Soldier was thought to have been there, at least once. There were a few grainy, far away images that told that story. There was even one that looked like Bucky, shielding his face with a baseball cap and oversized sweatshirt.

He grunted and punched a hole straight through the wall.

-

It did cross his mind that he should explain the file to Sam, and they could decide together what they wanted to do about it.

But as much as he enjoyed working their ‘missing person’s case’ together as Sam had started calling it, this felt personal.

  
Before he’d gone down in the Valkyrie, he’d made a promise to himself that he would pull all of Hydra out by the roots, and he’d failed. SHIELD was gone now, yeah, but what did that mean when there was a Hydra facility literally three miles away from his apartment? He might as well have been living in it the entire time.

Bucky might have been there too.

He needed to take another deep breath to avoid putting another hole in the wall.

No, this was something he had to do himself. He could tell Sam about it after if he learned anything useful.

-

It was under the cover of darkness that he got to the island. While in the daytime it looked like a nice, little forestry, picturesque escape from the bureaucracy of DC, at night, Steve could hear his heart thudding in his ears.

There was a door, somewhere - that was all he knew from the picture that he’d seen in the file.

But when he saw it, he wasn’t really prepared for it.

It wasn’t so much a door as it was an entire building, and now Steve was feeling increasingly angry with himself. Hydra didn’t even have the decency to put their facility underground, and he’d literally kayaked right past it.

He remembered Hydra facilities being well-guarded and armed to the teeth, but this one looked completely abandoned. Still, he reminded himself, he needed to tread lightly.

When he reached the door and looked inside, he got his second surprise of the evening.

Someone had already gone through the facility - there were papers everywhere, and dark, rusty smears of blood on the floor. As he made his way further inside, he noted what looked like a vault - and a cage. It wasn’t until he had glimpsed the chair that he’d actually wretched.

He forced himself to take a breath. He’d make sure that nobody was here, and then he’d go through the papers that were left and see if there was anything valuable for the search. If not, he’d just go and leave the place like he’d found it.

“Hello Captain,” he heard a man rasp.

He whipped around wildly to find that there definitely, in fact, was someone here.

He stepped closer to the man, noting that there was more than one cell in the facility. Someone - perhaps the someone who had ransacked the facility - had put him there.

Steve held onto hope that it was Bucky, even though his gut told him that Bucky would never risk coming back here.

Hoped he hadn’t.

“You did quite a number on him Captain,” the man hummed, which made Steve raise an eyebrow.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, I tried,” the man rocked himself back and forth. “I tried so hard to make him perfect. He would have been perfect if I’d had more time, you know? The fist of Hydra, who could hear the thoughts of his enemies and crush them without a weapon. I tried so hard. So hard.”

“Who are you?”

“Wolfgang von Strucker, Captain. I was Zola’s apprentice back in the early 1970s,” Strucker grinned widely. “He talked about you, a lot, you know? He wanted to know why the serum had bonded to you so, _so_ badly.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he did,” Steve said tightly, watching as Strucker fidgeted in the cell. Strucker’s name was familiar - he’d seen it come up once or twice in the investigation with Sam, but last he knew he was somewhere in Sokovia, not in Washington, DC.

He placed his hand on the bars - they were strong, but not that strong. Nothing he couldn’t bend if he really put his mind to it.

Strucker snickered and Steve’s eyes shot up. “You’re going to let me die down here, aren’t you?”

Steve shook his head, and Strucker laughed again. “Oh, Zola. He was always so proud of his work. He told me that he must have injected about fifty different men at Azzano, all hoping that he’d be able to replicate the effects.”

His heart felt like it’d stopped in his chest. “They died. Well, forty-nine of them did.”

“Wait,” Steve furrowed his brow. “That can’t be right. I freed everyone at Azzano. How could you know that?”

When Strucker laughed again Steve was filled with the impulse to snap his neck just to make him stop. “Do you really think Hydra is stupid enough to let an investment up and walk right from under their nose?” he scoffed.

“So...what happened to these men?”

Strucker shrugged. “Lots of things. Some had heart attacks. Some had strokes. One of them actually killed ten of the others, but Zola never told me if he knew why he’d done it, just that one day--” he snapped his fingers. “Maybe he knew what they were.”

Anger flared inside of him. What gave Strucker or anyone in Hydra to treat people like they were their own personal science experiments? He clenched the bars in his hands, which almost seemed to amuse Strucker further.

“The Asset was the only one who survived from that group,” he tutted to himself. “I believe you knew him as James Buchanan Barnes?”

“Say his name again and I’ll rip your tongue out of your mouth.”

Strucker raised an eyebrow at him. “We both know that’s not your style, Captain.”

Strucker relaxed in the cell, folding his arms behind his head as he closed his eyes. “Zola was so happy when they found him in the snow. Called him his greatest work. Even if he was….volatile. Took us about twenty years to make him forget his name.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut at the picture that his mind was painting for him - one where Bucky was alone in a small cell, beaten every time he responded to his real name. Through his and Sam’s investigation, they’d found one picture of a place where Bucky had been held, and he hadn’t been able to look at it for more than a few seconds without vomiting.

“He wasn’t special, Captain. We didn’t pick him because we thought it would get to you,” Strucker shrugged. “He was...a lab rat that refused to die.”

SHIELD was in shambles, and there really wasn’t anywhere that he could take Strucker, although he supposed he could always drop him on the doorstep of The Capitol Building. Now that would have made a statement.

“But you knew,” Steve countered. “Otherwise you would have had Rumlow slit my throat in my sleep.” He certainly had plenty of opportunities - Sharon probably would have even let him in through the front door of their apartment building, none the wiser.

Strucker chuckled. “Let’s just call it something of a happy accident.”

“Answer the fucking question,” he growled, and Strucker put his hands up defensively.

“Fine, fine. He was agitated. He could tell that you knew him. And that he knew you. Weakness was not good for The Asset, but it was good for you.”  
Strucker shook his head. “I’m so disappointed. We worked so hard on him. He was the most perfect of them all.”

The bars bent in his grip. “Where is he?”

“Oh Captain, I probably know about as well as you do. We didn’t exactly have a cup of tea when he showed up.”

When Strucker shifted, it was easier for him to catch sight of the bruises that littered the right side of his face, and the glint of red blood across his mouth.

“It was the least you deserved.”

Strucker shook his head. “There are many of me, Captain. Where one fails, another succeeds. You’ll see some of my new work soon, I think. Let me know what you think of it when you do.”

“What do you mean, new work?”

Suddenly his mind was full of thoughts of people--as old as Bucky had been, and even younger--being injected with all sorts of poisons. Sitting in cells until their muscles went lax as they were observed through a tiny hole in the wall. Scrubbed clean of everything that made them themselves.

Bucky had suffered for a lifetime. If caring about that suffering made him weak, then he was weak.

Strucker’s lip curled. “Are you going to stop me, Captain? I mean, it’s kind of funny that this is the first time you’ve seen the place, isn’t it? You probably could have found it if you’d actually cared about looking for it.”

The bars give easily under his hands and he stalks closer to Strucker, heaving him to his feet with one hand. Strucker smirks.

“But you didn’t care, did you? Not really. What’s a couple of Sokovian teenagers? They’re not who you’re looking for.”

The next part of the story he left out for Sam when he retold it, but Natasha knows. Natasha knows everything.

  
Having had enough of the fucking smirking and chuckling and snickering and the way that Hydra committed themselves so relentlessly to destroying the minds and bodies of innocent people for their cause, Steve pried Strucker’s mouth apart.

Strucker started to writhe around in his grasp, but Strucker wasn’t an alien or The Winter Soldier. He was a sad, beaten-up scientist, and although it did cross Steve’s mind that he could have been holding some kind of syringe full of poison on his person, if it was Bucky, really Bucky - who had left him there, it didn’t seem likely.

He reached into his mouth, keeping his jaw apart, wrapped his fingers around his tongue, and pulled.

Hearing him scream didn’t feel like enough.

And twisting his spine until his neck broke felt disappointing in a way. Hydra deserved so much more for what they’d done to Bucky, and the countless other innocent people they’d ripped away from their lives.

\---

Six months later, he came face-to-face with another Wolfgang von Strucker in a Hydra research base in Sokovia.

While this time, this one was placed in a cell, Steve couldn’t stop thinking about what Strucker had said to him in Washington, DC-- _where one fails, another succeeds._

The Strucker he’d killed in Washington, DC was a carbon copy of the original.

Strucker had only been in prison for about a day before Steve stopped Nat in the Tower. “I want to question him. Strucker.”

She gave Steve a look of incredulity. “Steve, that is not going to happen.”

“He knows something about The Winter Soldier program, I know it.”

“And you,” she said firmly. “Are too close to The Winter Soldier and to James Barnes. It would just be an opportunity for Strucker to get inside your head and do something you regretted.”

As much as Steve wanted to insist that she was wrong, that he had never done anything he regretted when it came to look for Bucky, he knew she was right, deep down. If he got into a room with Strucker - the real Strucker, if this was him - he’d probably give him the same treatment he’d given his copy in Washington, DC.

He was helpless when it came to Bucky, and he knew it.

“I need to find him, Nat,” he murmured, and he could feel a cocktail of regret, guilt, nostalgia, and love settle in his chest.

Nat took a deep breath and nodded. “You know, I think when we clean up this whole Ultron mess...there might be a few more files going missing from Ukraine.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to pull on that thread.”

Nat gave him a small smile. “Some things should be unraveled.”

But as she walked away, Steve couldn’t help but catch a glint of recognition in her eyes that made him wonder if she was telling him everything she knew.

**Author's Note:**

> I vaguely probably misread something about Strucker having clones, so there you go, clones.
> 
> Threads  
> Creator(s): plutosrose  
> Card number: 012  
> Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390279  
> Square filled: B1, Weakness  
> Rating: M  
> Archive warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence  
> Major tags: Steve being violent toward Nazis, Hydra's Nazi Experiments, Investigations, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron (movie)  
> Summary: There are some threads Steve will pull loose if it means finding Bucky.  
> Word count: 2,742


End file.
